This year's theme for Black History Month – Black Health and Wellness – acknowledges the legacy of Black scholars and medical practitioners in Western medicine and other essential roles such as birth workers, doulas, midwives, and more.
With this theme in mind, we would like to take the time to recognize Dr. Jane C. Wright, the pioneering oncologist who helped change chemotherapy drug treatment from the last step for cancer patients to the effective treatment option that is today. Dr. Wright worked with her father at the Harlem Hospital Cancer Research Foundation, where she was a frontier leader in discovering and developing the chemicals that effectively attack and destroy cancer cells – chemicals that form the basis of medications that are viable treatments for most forms of cancer.
Dr. Wright passed away in 2013, but she will be remembered as the highest-ranked African American woman at a nationally recognized medical institution – The New York Cancer Society – and for her efforts that forever changed cancer treatment.
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